What’s the body as being-in-the-world? How’s a body as being-in-the-box, especially when the box’s filled with balloons? This project explores “pressure” as a sensory experience, examining how it shapes bodily mobility and perception alongside elements such as space, texture, light, and sound.

This project follows a linear process: First, an active body sits inside a transparent but confined box. The audience gradually fills the space with balloons, encasing the body in an environment of increasing pressure. After a period of immersion, the box is then covered with black blankets, eliminating light and altering the sensory field. In this imposed darkness, the participant is invited to move slowly, further attuning to the tactile and spatial shifts. Meanwhile, outside the box, a balloon is suddenly popped—introducing an external auditory rupture to the experience within.

Perspective and Context

• “Think the space from the body, not thinking the body from the space” -- Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the significance of an oriented perspective—the idea that perception is always rooted in the lived body rather than an external, objective viewpoint. This notion was central to my approach in amplifying the presence of pressure in the air. By fully immersing the participant in balloons, the aim is to disrupt their ability to orient themselves in a conventional, objective manner. Instead, they must navigate their surroundings through heightened bodily awareness, relying on touch, movement, and shifting pressure rather than spatial preconceptions.

• "In public access, form now takes on the added responsi-bilities and accouterments of communication."   -- Robert Irwin

Irwin argues that public engagement implies the need for shared meaning and interaction. By participating in the process (filling the box, altering the conditions), the audience becomes an active medium through which communication happens. Their actions serve as an external force, shaping how the participant inside perceives space, movement, and bodily orientation. This also highlights Merleau-Ponty’s idea that perception is relational—it is shaped not just by the individual body but also by external conditions, including social and environmental influences.

Development & Technical Implementation

1. Ideation

2. frame

3. Canvas

4. Fixation

To keep the space looking open (transparent) but still closed thus pressured, I used screws and velcro to seal the surfaces of the box.

5. Balloons

Presentation

Suggestions I found interesting:

• Allowing interactions from all directions. I like how this could add unpredictability to the process which challenges the perception even more.

• Allowing the balloons to be popped inside the box. My consideration of "faking" the explosion outside the box was only out of safety considerations. But maybe that takes away some sensory experiences they could have received from balloons actually exploding besides them considering the air, etc.

Conclusion

I previously worked on a project in Digital Fabrication class where I created an organ-shaped inflatable installation to express how pressure and stress give me a sensation of swelling within my body. This reinforced my belief that all organs are sensory organs, even if they are not in direct contact with the objects we interact with. In this sense, this “Love Pressure” project provides a great chance for me to externalize and make the experience of pressure more visible and tangible.

One of the most majort discoveries from this experiment was that pressure is not just a physical sensation but also a psychological and anticipatory experience. The participants did not need to physically feel the balloons pop to experience tension—just seeing the balloons surrounding them and knowing they could explode was enough to induce nervousness. The expectation of the loud sound and the sudden shift in air pressure created an internalized form of stress, proving that pressure is as much about anticipation and perception as it is about direct sensory contact.

If I were to refine this project, my first adjustment would be to use balloons that do not explode easily and avoid over-inflation. This would allow participants to squeeze them, adding pressure on them, thus deepening their immersion in the space. By enabling both the external (tactile) and internal (psychological) experiences of pressure to coexist, the project could further amplify the intensity of sensory perception, making the observations even more compelling.

Appendix